The Exchange 10-12-12

Edward F. Maroney

Friday

Oct 12, 2012 at 2:00 AM

We grow up being told stories that have beginnings and endings, but too often newspaper reports just trail off in a long procession of details. Bucking the trend recently was The Enterprise’s Diana T. Barth, who wrote of a Vermont Army National Guard captain whose hobby is returning lost or stolen Purple Hearts to soldiers and their families. Zachariah Fike, 31, came to Bourne last month to present to the family of World War I Pvt. Ralph Bingham the honor Bingham received after being wounded in France. Having shared details of some of the 15 medals Fike has helped return, Barth ends her story by noting that he “earned his on September 11 of 2010 when he was hit by a rocket grenade while serving in Afghanistan.”

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Sometimes the best headlines are the simplest. “Cape man catches tuna from a kayak” topped a Register story about David Lamoureux of West Yarmouth, dropping jaws around the Mid-Cape. What’s it like to be in a kayak when you catch a tuna? “It’s like standing on the railroad tracks and hooking an engine,” Lamoureux told reporter Susan Vaughn.

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Sportswriters are accused of being “homers” when they focus on the teams on their beat to the point of ignoring the visitors’ performance, win or lose. Don’t include Rich Maclone of the Enterprise papers in that bunch. When Darien Fernandez of Wareham High ran away with a game against Falmouth High’s football team last month, Maclone knew that was the story, and he added a thoughtful post-game quote from Falmouth coach Steve Femino: “He was just the best athlete on the field and I didn’t put enough time in on tackling, obviously.”

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Also admirable in this realm is Cape Cod Chronicle sports chronicler Eric Adler. He led his section one week with the grim news that the Monomoy boys soccer team, which got one warning in 20 games last year as the Harwich Rough Riders, has “absolutely zero chance” of winning another league sportsmanship award. The Monomoy Sharks have been “cautioned with a handful of yellow cards for unruly and undisciplined behavior,” Adler wrote, “sometimes for overly aggressive physical play, but mostly for improper language.”

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Cape author Jim Coogan has a retentive mind. He’s already regaled readers of his Cape Cod Times column with tales of his elementary school in Brewster, and last month he popped up in a Register story about his Dennis-Yarmouth Regional High School Class of 1962 reunion. “We couldn’t get liquor because everyone knew us,” Coogan said of his younger days. “Old Mr. Hewitt had a jug of cider on his back porch that had turned hard. A few of us snuck up, siphoned some off and drank it on Glendon Beach.” In an e-mail exchange, Jim added this postscript: “If I recall, we got that jug back to the car and when we held it up to the light it looked like it contained a mass of something that was white and amorphous. We didn't drink it. Later I was told it was called the "mother" something that happens when the juice ferments. Never tried any since!!”

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It’s no surprise Paul Fulcher spent so much of his career caring for the beaches of Orleans. He told The Cape Codder that his great-great-great-grandfather was a true washashore, literally washing ashore from a shipwreck off Nauset Light. Fulcher retired this summer after 37 years with the parks department.

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You remember the “open classroom” movement of decades past that tried to make the learning environment less regimented? The Enterprise reported that Bourne Middle School has opened things up even further with its outdoor classroom, complete with double rows of benches, out toward a football field.

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New legislation gave chain supermarkets the right to hold a small multiple of liquor licenses in Massachusetts, and giant Stop & Shop decided it wanted the fourth of the five it’s allowed for its East Harwich shop, right across the street from Harwich East Liquors. One critic told The Cape Codder there are 14 such establishments within a four-mile radius of Stop & Shop. In the face of widespread opposition, the super-supermarket withdrew its request, but it may be back.

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The Enterprise reported that the owner of Plymouth’s Captain John Whale Watching and Fishing Tours is talking with town officials about operating whale watch and ferry service to Provincetown from the Sandwich Marina. “Particularly for the folks coming in from New York and New Jersey who frequent Provincetown, that would be an ideal alternative for them to avoid the long journey on the mid-Cape,” Sandwich Economic Initiative Corporation President Timothy Cooney said.

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A founding investor and still the largest stockholder in what became Cape Air, Grant Wilson knew a thing or two about seizing opportunities. The Cape Cod Chronicle said the Wayside Inn partner challenged himself, “whether that involved skydiving in Chatham or spending almost five years on a round-the-world journey on the 94-foot expedition vessel Whale Song.”

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One of these days, we’re going to take a Falmouth Historical Society trolley-bus tour of Cape Cod’s own mini-Cornwall. Tour guide Jim Lloyd told the Enterprise the elegant village green, now bracketed by churches, used to be lined with taverns and extended for 11 acres: “It had to be so big for all the people coming out of the taverns to sleep on.” The mobile history lesson is guaranteed quack-free.

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Was it the reporter, or the speaker himself? We’re not sure which one to thank for this chuckle-producer in a Cape weekly: “There would be an increase in public safety, enable a drinking problem, provide an avenue of convenience for the youth and exasperate the problem…”

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